Seward Museum gets $10,000 to make World War II exhibit accessible

Seward Museum visitors will gain new ways to explore its World War II exhibit under a $10,000 federal grant to the City of Seward from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The money covers reader rails to improve access for visitors with disabilities — an agency priority — along with a new mural and three narrated videos built from scripts the museum wrote. The videos cover Fort McGilvray, Fort Raymond, and the war's social impact on the town. The museum is no stranger to federal help, having taken part in the agency's assessment programs for small and midsize museums since 2011.

Fort McGilvray, one of the video subjects, guarded Seward with guns that never fired a shot. After Japan seized the Aleutian islands of Attu and Kiska in 1942, the Army raced to fortify the town — an ice-free port and the southern terminus of the Alaska Railroad, and so a vital wartime supply line. High on Caines Head, a cliff 650 feet above Resurrection Bay, it built an underground maze of bunkers and magazines anchored by two six-inch guns that could reach ships 16 miles out. But once American and Canadian forces retook the Aleutians in 1943, the threat faded and the fort was dismantled, reportedly just before its first test-fire. Its ruins still sit on the headland, now a state park reached by a coastal trail.